


Samsara (What's Old Is New Again)

by Seiberwing



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Grieving, Magic, Magical Tattoos, Mentions of Character Death, Older Pines Twins, Piedmont CA, Post-Finale, Sweaters, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 23:03:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6133195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiberwing/pseuds/Seiberwing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you Mr. Pines? The nephew of a Mr. Stanford Pines?”</p><p>“Yes…? Is Uncle Stan in some kind of trouble?”</p><p>“May I come in? I have some grave news about your uncle and his friend, and I’d prefer to discuss it in private."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Samsara (What's Old Is New Again)

Technology was, despite the many complaints of the older generation, pretty fantastic. One of the many things that had fascinated Ford-nee-Stanford Pines upon his reintroduction to his home dimension was how far long-distance communications had come. Of course the worlds on the other side of the Universe Portal had their own brand of sufficiently-developed-technology-mistaken-for-magic, but it didn’t stop him from marveling at how easily information could be made available to the entirety of humanity (and despairing at how much of that information was pornography or cats with bad grammar).

He and Stan phoned regularly when there were somewhere that got actual service, and Skyped when they returned to a place civilized enough to have wi-fi. Dipper didn’t have to wait until the beginning of summer (the greatest three months of the year, every year, and both twins were already planning their college application decisions within the boundaries of a specific circle centering on the Mystery Shack so that they could continue to be the best three months) to see footage of extradimensional communion rituals practiced by specific Australian cults who’d brought their quaint cultural traditions with them on the long boat ride from England. And Mabel had been unbearable for six weeks straight upon being sent photographic proof that yes, there was a specific subspecies of pseudo-vampiric organism that sparkled in the sunlight.

When the Stans dropped off the radar for five months the younger twin set didn’t think much of it. These things happened. Their excursion to Atlantis, for example, had been in a Texas-sized dead zone hovering in the middle of the garbage island in the Pacific Ocean, and the artifacts that showed up in the mail afterwards had been beautiful enough to make the wait worth it. (Listening to Grunkle Stan talk at length about the attributes of mermaids had been…less so. Though it was good to hear Mermando was settling into his marriage and kingship comfortably.)

It was midway through June, a week until what Wendy had termed “G-Day”, when the man in the suit and thick sunglasses knocked on the Pines residence door. Dipper and Mabel were upstairs in Mabel’s boy-band-bedecked bedroom figuring out what to pack, with Dipper in the unfortunate position of having to advise on which new sweaters were going to make it into the suitcase. Mabel never actually listened to his suggestions but it was comforting to feel like she wasn’t the only one having to make the drastic choice between Ice Cream Sweater and Mummy/Werewolf Tag Team Sweater. Personally, Dipper prided himself on only packing the essentials in his summer suitcases, such as the five core books for _Dungeons Dungeons and More Dungeons_ (6th Edition) plus the second volume of the _Horrors Handbook_ and the infamously harrowing _Catacomb of Spookiness_ module.

The triple chime of the doorbell echoed up the stairs, followed by a less melodious “I’ll get it!” from their father, who’d been in the middle of an attempt to make curry that was rapidly sliding downhill. Another reason to huddle upstairs and wait for the smoke to clear.

Dipper dropped his current armload of sweaters. “Awesome! Bet that’s my EMF detector upgrade kit, I didn’t think it’d make it here before we left.”

Mabel pressed her hands together and spun around, making her star-and-moon earrings tinkle. “Or maybe a love note. From a giiiiiiiiiirl.”

“Love notes aren’t a thing, Mabel. We have Facebook and SnapChat now.”

“Chivalry isn’t dead, Dipper! You can SnapChat a love note!”

They shoved at each other, scrambling for the door just in case it was a steamy missive needing to be hidden/publicly read before the other twin got their hands on it, and were halfway down the stairs when the man at the door spoke.

“Are you Mr. Pines? The nephew of a Mr. Stanford Pines?”

“Yes…? Is Uncle Stan in some kind of trouble?”

In sync the twins dropped into a huddle. Mabel’s hand lingered at her hip, aching for a grappling hook. It might not have improved all situations where deep-voiced stoics came looking for her great-uncle but it certainly hadn't hurt the last time the government paid Grunkle Stan a visit.

“May I come in? I have some grave news about your uncle and his friend, and I’d prefer to discuss it inside.”

Two sets of feet walked backwards up the stairs, two sets of breath grew shallow. The twins watched their father, shirt stained from the detritus of exploding coconut milk, pass by the opening to the stairway followed by a man in a dark suit with sunglasses.

“You think it’s the government?” Dipper whispered.

“Maybe it’s the IRS.”

“Why would the IRS come here?”

“Maybe we’re his forwarding address. It’s something he’d do.”

“Yeah.” They shared a resigned shrug and half-smile of the ‘that’s our Compulsively Criminal Grunkle’ variety. Mabel carefully removed her shoes, bracelets, and jingling earrings to increase her stealth potential so they could foray back down the stairs again.

The man took a seat on Mr. Pines’ expensive multi-function Relax-O-Seat chair. On the couch, Mrs. Pines was self-consciously pawing at her unshowered hair to make it lay flat, and Mabel was entirely sure her thoughts were on how she wished she’d had a chance to do her face up before someone invited a stranger into their house. (Mabel’s mother had been very, _very_ firm with Mabel throughout her teenagerhood to make sure she accepted her own beauty and body type without caving to societal expectations of how a woman should look. Mabel was still working on her mother to do the same.) Beside her, Mr. Pines was wiping curry stains form his hands.

The man leaned forward and pressed his hands together. “I’m sorry to be the one delivering this news. Your uncle’s boat, the _Stan O’War II_ , disappeared in the Scotia Sea during a hurricane three months ago. After a thorough search by the Argentinian coast guard turned up only a few fragments of the ship washed up on the shore, they were forced to declare the ship, and all aboard it, lost to the storm.”

Mabel’s mind went blank. No. Not okay. Dipper was trying to say something but his throat had closed up and all he could mouth was ‘no’ over and over again, same as her blue-screened brain was doing. No. 

“Oh, my goodness…and his friend Ford Trembley?” their mother was asking, in a voice that seemed a thousand miles away. The man on the couch shook his head.

“Also gone, I’m afraid.”

Under a little-known article of federal law that might have only existed in the 14th ½ president’s head, a person whose identity had been stolen was therefore obligated to be bestowed a new name by the highest existing authority in a 50 mile radius, as well as $6.18 dollars in wooden nickels and a medium sized salamander as compensation for his troubles. Since Stanley Pines was legally dead it had seemed simplest, after much griping, to forge paperwork giving the actual Stanford a new legal identity.

But now Stan was illegally dead. Illegally because every law of God and Man and Nature and Fae said that he couldn’t be dead, he just couldn’t, and Grunkle Ford too and…

Mabel wanted to cry. It would have hurt less. Instead, it felt as if the sob was stuck in her throat like a sharp brick lodged in a drainpipe. She gasped for air as Dipper’s fingers left bruises in her arm, spikes driving into her heart, and it wasn’t fair that Dipper got to have tears when hers were stinging at her eyes and—

“Not. He’s not. They can’t.” Mabel pressed her face against Dipper’s shoulder. “He’s. We can’t. Not after we did. Not after all that.”

She felt the movement of Dipper’s head as he jerkily nodded against her shoulder. They’d never handled a major death before. The only funerals they’d attended in the past were for distant relatives, for whom Dipper had donned a stiff suit to see laid out in a casket while quietly whispering to Mabel about all the weird things they did to corpses to make them look so pretty and presentable instead of zombieish.

The closest they’d come to a meaningful loss was their mother’s father Alex, who had passed away peacefully a few weeks after they turned thirteen, and while the man wasn’t objectionable there weren’t many fond memories to grieve. They had known him more by reputation and the giant taxidermied bison he inexplicably kept in his living room which had caused a fistfight between heirs seeking to take custody of it. His passing had only left them with a vague discomfort that eventually dissipated, a sense that something bad had happened but not in a way that would really matter to them in the rest of their lives. 

Nothing like this.

Mable could feel a scream coming, in that way one could tell one was about to vomit and was just waiting for one’s body to get on with the job so one could stop hovering over the toilet bowl. Over the deafening drumming of their hearts, beating so painfully that each twin fancied they could hear the pulse of the other, the man continued talking. “They left behind a letter to be read to your children in the event of their untimely deaths, and only to them. As per their instructions I hand delivered it here. Are they home?”

And that did it. A shriek of agony ripped its way out of Mabel’s throat so violently that that the hand-painted Uruguayan vases shook on the living room bookshelves. Dipper was hyperventilating against the wall, grabbing at his shirt as if to loosen it. In the kitchen Waddles fell off the counter (where he was not allowed to be) and let out an answering squeal as if to echo their pain. Mr. and Mrs. Pines cringed in unison, but the man stayed stoic as the shriek continued high and slowly slid lower as it wobbled with intermingled sobs.

“That, ah. That’ll be the kids,” said Mr. Pines, back straight and jaw tight. His wife ran her hand over her face, tugging her flattened hair into frizz. 

The twins staggered down the stairs. Mabel’s face was reddening and sticky with new tears, Dipper was starting to chew frantically on the thumbnail of his left hand.

Their father opened his arms to them, an invitation neither accepted. “Kids, I’m so sorry. Your great-uncle was a good man, and he died doing what he loved—”

“Uh-uh,” Mabel insisted, as Dipper ran out of nail and started digging teeth into his cuticle instead. Stupid. What did they know, stupid parents. 

The man in the suit stood. He was broad-chested, and the wide arms of his sunglasses pressed into the thick sideburns that hung down the sides of his face. If he had any reaction to their grief his voice never gave it. “Perhaps we should find somewhere private to talk. I think Mr. Pines’ letter might help give your children some closure.”

He was already turning his back to the twins to head to the door in the back of the kitchen. Mrs. Pines tried to squeeze her children’s shoulders as they passed, only to have Mabel violently shrug it off and Dipper wince at the gesture. She wouldn’t understand, they thought. She hadn’t lived through Weirdmaggedon, or pig-stealing Pterodactyls, or the Cyclopean Invasion of 2018. She would never understand what it was like to fight to keep a pair of Grunkle Stans.

The kitchen door slammed behind them like the lid of a frustrated revenant’s coffin, and Waddles hid his head in his basket beneath a well-chewed Painted Equine Companions blanket.

\--

Mrs. Pines leaned against the door as her husband watched out the window, and then drew the curtains to give his grieving children a moment of privacy. He’d only met Uncle Stanford a handful of times, and very briefly at that, and mainly knew him through the wild tales his father spun of a brilliant eccentric with a habit of stealing cutlery from restaurants and getting really excited about conspiracy theories. Sending the twins away to a town in the woods to stay with a man who’d last seen them as mewling snotty babies had perhaps not made him a parent of the year contender, upon reflection.

“This is going to sound horribly mercenary, but what are we going to do with them this summer? You’ve got your speaking tours and I really need to get work done.”

Mrs. Pines kept stroking her hair, twisting it around her finger to try and con it into going from frizz to curl. “We could still send them to Gravity Falls anyway. They could stay with Jesús and his grandmother. Mabel’s friends are there, and at least it gets Dipper out of the house. But I suppose it won’t be the same without their great-uncle and his…” Mrs. Pines waved her hand in an awkward circular gesture to indicate that which could not be said due to politeness but could be inferred easily from context. “You know. Ford.”

From the twins’ stories Ford and Stan had sounded very close, almost family. The twins even called him their second Grunkle. And from Mr. Pines’ father’s stories Stanford had always been a science-oriented shut-in with no interest in relationships with women, and he’d grown up in a different time, and it was really only Stan’s business what he did with the man who he let live in his house and spent all his time with and put his arm around when posing for Mabel’s scrapbook pictures. 

Mrs. Pines shook her head, picking out strands of stray hair from her manicured fingertips. “They just loved their ‘grunkle’ so much. This will devastate them…and summer vacation starts in a week.”

Mr. Pines took one final peek as the man in the suit pulled an envelope out of the inner pocket of his suit jacket. “All right. You prepare the ice cream, I’ll go get their birthday presents out of the attic. This is going to be rough.” 

\--  
The orange tree cast a heavy shadow over the backyard. The man in the suit paced down the stone path through Mrs. Pines’ flowerbeds to the picnic table they used for barbecues and evening cups of cocoa, then turned to perch on it. Face still blank, he split the envelope seal with his thumbnail and carefully opened it.

The twins clasped hands as the man cleared his throat. Mabel had already pulled her sweater sleeve down over her wrist in preparation to blot her tears, and Dipper had removed his UFO-emblazoned cap to hold over his heart. Where would they put the graves, Dipper was wondering. Gravity Falls or New Jersey? Maybe a pair of small plaques inside the Mystery Shack, one slightly larger than the other, cast in gold and engraved with some poignant yet witty quote making a feeble attempt to sum up a pair of lives more fantastic than the outside world could ever imagine.

“Dear kids,” the man read from a sheet of paper wrinkled at the edges by sea water. “I want you to know that you’ve been a constant inspiration to us during our long trips to discover the weird and unknown. Without you we’d never have found each other again.”

He looked over the top of the letter, then raised it up further to cover his view of Mabel beginning to shake like a pine tree in a windstorm. Dipper was going through the breathing exercises the Multibear had taught him last year to counter pointless fear and rage, until remembering Gravity Falls brought both rage and fear sliding back again.

“We’d have lost the rest of our lives instead of just thirty years to our own stupidity,” the man continued. “And also a giant triangle demon might have ended the world. The years since we met you have been the most worthwhile and the most fun we’ve ever had. We know you two can accomplish anything you put your mind to, because we’ve seen the amazing things you can do, and the amazing things you’ve helped us do. I’m sure you’ve missed us terribly, and we want you to know that we’ve missed you too.”

From over the high fence surrounding the yard came a shout in a voice that, while no longer creaked with age, still carried the smugness of a man who’d grown too old to care about walking around in his boxers when company was over, echoed in kind by the man in the suit as his face split into a cackling grin.

“BUT OUR AIM IS GETTING BETTER!”

The man in the suit took off his sunglasses, laughing, and was about to speak when a powerful sweater-wrapped right hook connected with his cheek.

“I’m sorry, Grunkle Stan!” Mabel shouted as Stan fell backwards. “All my love and happiness just concentrated to my fist and it loved you so much that it just jumped at your face to get to you faster!”

Stan sat up, rubbing his chin with fingers unblemished by age spots or odd moles. Now that they knew what to look for the twins could pick out their great-uncle’s thick jaw and broad ears with ease, thought the wrinkles that had coalesced around them had receded. “I see the judo lessons are paying off—agh!” He fell backwards again as both twins tackled him into the ground. “Okay, so I earned that one too.”

A six fingered hand clamped onto the top of the backyard fence, and a moment later a second man of identical age swung over into the backyard. He was wearing a dark trenchcoat fresh off the rack and a pair of sensible boots that landed hard on Mrs. Pines’ marigolds. 

“I’m sorry for the charade, kids,” said Ford. His russet-brown hair was sleek and lush, and even his glasses looked like they’d taken a leap from ‘senior citizen nerdy cokebottles’ to ‘hip GQ model’. “No one would ever believe that we were the same people, looking like we are, and faking our deaths seemed simpler than a continuous charade. And it’s gone a long way towards clearing out my brother’s exceptional range of open warrants, debts, and criminal convictions.”

“And it was funny,” Stan commented from beneath the twin pile. 

“Also, I’m sorry my brother is a jerk. If it helps, Stan’s will leaves everything to the two of you, including my own possessions.”

“Except Soos gets the Mystery Shack and my fez. Also, you’d better not actually spend my money until I’m actually dead, and I mean confirm with a mirror level of dead.”

Mabel ran her hands down Stan’s chest in awe. “You’re both so handsome! And muscley!” Though the haircut could definitely use some work. Now that he had enough hair to work with she had so many plans for making him look properly vogue.

Stan laughed and chucked her under the chin. “I was always handsome, kid. All my muscles just moved to my gut. And turned into fat. This time around I am definitely hitting the gym more often.”

Dipper had gone from latching to Stan to latching to Ford. “How is this even possible? Are you undead? Are you actually necromancers who made an unthinkable deal with the spirits of the underworld? Because if you did I have so many questions--” 

Ford laughed. “Nothing so esoteric. You’ll remember that the last time we spoke, I said we were investigating a series of islands off the coast of Argentina? While we were on one of the smallest atolls, we encountered a temporal alteration fluid coalescing in a specific anomalous nexus that reformatted our cellular structure in a reverse-“

Stan reached out from under Mabel to thump Ford’s knee. “The Fountain of Youth, egghead. We found the Fountain of Youth. Turns out Ponce de Whatever should have searched a little further south than Florida, I don’t know why _that_ was the place he thought he’d find young people.”

Ford sat down on the ground, the better to be grabbed and hugged. Dipper was still tightly clenching his arm, checking and rechecking the number of fingers to make sure it was really him. “So, how old are you now?” 

“By measuring the length of the telomeres in our cells compared to earlier samples, I’d say we got back…about thirty years.”

A look exchanged between the two of them, and then a sad smile that Stan immediately wiped away by punching Ford’s leg again and Ford wiped away with rushed expository dialogue.

“Unfortunately the anomaly vanished moments after we had the chance to experience its effects firsthand. I only managed to keep two vials of the substance. One sample I’m planning on studying, and one I’m saving it for a very specific old man who also deserves to get thirty years of his life back from me. We would have told you earlier, but we wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t wear off again once we’d made it away from the nexus. And then we had to, ah…well, we were testing the structural integrity and capabilities of our new…” 

Ford waved his hand in an awkward circular gesture to indicate that which could not be said due to politeness but could be inferred easily from context, before Stan decided that politeness could go sit on a rusty lamppost.

“We went to Vegas. Oh boy, did we go to Vegas. We went all over Vegas. And on top of Vegas, and in the dressing room with Vegas with her friends Summerlin and Boulder City…”

“Stanley, try and maintain some shred of decency around the children.”

“You told me what you did on Saturnia 9, don’t get moralizing on me, Sixer.”

“There were very different cultural standards on Saturnia 9, that is not the same thing!”

The twins were both covering their ears in mock disgust. Dipper was a 16 year old boy with an internet connection and Mabel was Mabel, they had an extremely clear understanding of how that specific process worked in myriad levels of detail and variation, but it was the time for overdramatic reactions. The laughter died slowly as hugs became less desperate, chains unclenched from hearts.

Ford signed. “Unfortunately, we didn’t just come down here just to show off Stanley’s muscles.” He threw a glance back towards this house, hoping that his nephew wasn’t in there wondering why two strange men were cuddling with his teenage children. “We have a problem, and we can’t fix it without you. Stanley? You want to show them?”

“You got it, Captain Buzzkill.”

Stan rolled over to rest his weight on one knee and bent his head forward, giving both twins a look at the back of his neck. The area just below his scalp was inscribed with a fresh tattoo, one that Dipper recognized vaguely as a binding circle. In the center of it was a raised bump, like a swollen welt, but delineated with perfectly straight lines. Stan ran the finger of his other hand along the edges, highlighting the exact shape of the bump.

A triangle. 

Mabel gasped, this time with no melodrama increasing the volume. “Is that…”

“It showed up a couple weeks ago,” grumbled Stan. “Apparently the little bas—jer—heck with it, you’re sixteen. The one-eyed three-sided bastard’s a chronic condition.”

“I don’t know if it’s due to our youthening, or if this was only a matter of time anyway. My best guess is that while we were purging him from Stanley’s mind he used some form of ritual or incantation to allow himself to reincarnate after his own destruction. Our one saving grace is that Bill’s currently unconscious, or at least in some kind of stasis recovering his strength. Every test I’ve run says that he can’t affect Stan right now, and I’ve even used the Magister Mentium ritual to go into his mind and see for myself. Also I’ve been regularly examining Stanley’s eyes for signs of possession.”

Stan threw his head back again, scowling. “Which is a blast at six in the morning, let me tell you.”

“I’ve managed to cage him within a very specific memory, blocking it from the rest of Stanley’s conscious mind. Once Stanley can remember that event again, it means Bill’s started working his way free, and we know that’s going to only be a matter of time. He might be able to pillage and possess Stanley’s mind, or he could exit Stanley’s mind completely and return to where he came from. Even before Weirdmageddon he still held a staggering amount of power…one bad handshake with an unsuspecting puppet and he could still find a way to destroy our world.”

“You’re not gonna erase Grunkle Stan’s mind again, are you?” From the way Mabel was clinging to Stan’s arm it was clear that her fists would be filled with even greater happiness for Ford if he tried.

Ford shook his head. “Well, you did break the memory gun, and clearly it was only a stopgap, anyway. If we only had a little time left maybe we could have waited him out, I imagine even without our active lifestyle we’d have at maximum twenty to twenty-five years. But now we’ve got more time, and I’ve got no intention of throwing away what we’ve gotten back.”

“And I’ve made too many great memories these last four years to want to give them up.” When Stan laughed Mabel found her ears seeking out a hint of shrillness and her gaze flickering to his eyes to catch that slitted yellow she’d been stupid enough to miss on Dipper last time. Not giving up her Grunkles. Not then, not now, not ever again.

Dipper tugged down the brim of his hat, setting his faced to Determined Investigator Mode. “So what do we do? How do we save Grunkle Stan?”

Ford rested a hand on her shoulder, as Stan slung his arm around Mabel. 

“There’s one options left to us, prophesized by the first humans in this dimension to come in contact with a dream demon. As soon as your parents drop you off we’ll grab you from the bus station so we can go gather the components we need to finally destroy Bill, this time for good. They’ve been scattered since I last tried this, and we need to bring them all back to Gravity Falls to make sure we make the ritual stick.”

“What are the components?”

“Not what. Who.” Stanley raised his hand, displaying all six fingers, a symbol Dipper had spent an entire summer fixated upon until he understood its true meaning.

“We’re going to remake the zodiac. And we’re going to destroy Bill Cipher for good.”


End file.
